I am sure most everyone has heard how you will repeat the same bad habits or cycle until you do something to change it. How do you change those habits or the cycle of life you are in? You need to evaluate and audit your lifestyle!

What is working in your life?

Do you love your job and it brings you happiness?

Do you love being a mom and taking care of your kids?

Do you love the hobby you participate in?

Do you love taking a walk everyday?

Do you love to take the time to read?

What isn’t working in your life?

Do you love your job but not your hours?

Do you love being a parent but need other adult interaction?

Do you dread going to play basketball with your league?

Do you look for excuses to get out of something you used to enjoy?

Do you avoid doing things because you know you won’t enjoy them?

These are all questions to ask yourself when you are doing a lifestyle audit!

For myself, I am a creative person so I am having the same routine everyday feels like it kills my creative brain cells. I do not thrive in that situation and end up never finding the time to be creative because I lose that drive from focusing on my routine. Its a fine line to be a creative work at home mom and have the same daily routine with kids. Evie loves having a routine where she is fed, takes her naps, baths and bedtime at the same time everyday. With holidays and summer parties, there are days where her schedule is messed with and boy do we pay for it with a baby that refuses to sleep. With Danyella being homeschooled, she has to have a routine or she will try to get out of doing her schoolwork (common occurence with a sassy tween). So what’s a creative mom to do when her kids need a routine? Find little ways to break up my routine so I don’t get into that blah feeling and avoid my creative side like changing up how I do my day each day. Plus, I tend to end up staying awake way to late after the girls are asleep to accomplish some of those mundane chores on my list that I avoided earlier in the day.

Now it is your turn! Print out the Lifestyle Audit PDF that I created for you to take a look at what is good and bad in your life. This will help determine what you need to change and what can stay the same to make your life the best it can be for today.

Danyella has been dealing with bullying and mean girls the past year so as her mother, I have been working on her self-care routine through her school work. She doesn’t realize that when I have her write a positive sentance everyday… its self care. She doesn’t realize that when I have her take 15 minutes before bed to write down her feelings…. its self care. There are many way I have incorporated self care into her homeschooling routine but self care isn’t just about what we do for ourselves.

Self care is doing things for other because it is good for our soul. It doesn’t mean you need to go all Oprah and giveaway cars, electronics or other awesome gifts (unless you can afford it). You have heard the stories of the people who start the giving lines at Starbucks where the car in front of them purchases their order for them and then it keeps on going. Or the person that surprises a child with a new bike that their parents can’t afford to buy them.

These little acts of kindness make us feel good about helping others and to see the smile on someone else’s face makes those acts completely worth it. Yes, we do need to make sure we are happy and secure in ourselves but doing things for others when they don’t know it’s coming or asking for it adds to the happiness we feel in our lives.

It is small things like:

Giving a friend a hug when they are down

Holding a door open for a mom with kids in each arm and on each leg

Writing a letter to a soldier serving our country

Leaving a cold bottle of water for the mailman in the summer

Making a meal for someone who is ill

Donating food to a food bank

The possibilities are endless….

Danyella and I are starting our 100 Act of Kindness Days challenge today. Each day we will find something nice to do for someone else. We will record what we did and how it helped someone else. I want to teach Danyella that among all the mean people in the world, be one of the nice people. Who wants to join us in this challenge?

If you are anything like me, you can fall into a funk with keep a positive life all of the time. Things happen that can cause stress in your life which can lead to negative thoughts. It can be easy for your mind to get distracted by negative thoughts and forget everything we should be grateful for.

The other funk I fall into is being grateful for the same things over and over. Yes, I am thankful for my house, my children, my husband, my family etc… you get where I am going with this. Now, it is time to find the details of those general things that I am grateful for not just my kids, etc.

One way that helps me sort through these funks is to use my ABC list. This allows my brain to open up and think outside of the box for the things that I am grateful for in my life. Some of the letters make me get very creative which helps in exercising my brain as well.

Such as… A: I am grateful for apples and that my baby girl is big enough to start eating applesauce now.

You can start off with one letter a day or a few at a time. You can go in order or skip around. In the end all that matters is that you are working on your positive life and gratitude towards what is in your life.

I created the sheets in yellow and purple to brighten your day while you write, the first link is the pdf to download, the second is a jpg:

A bucket list is something that people have been doing for years, decades even centuries. People have written books about bucket lists and movies have been made about them even one move having the title The Bucket List. (Great movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) You might even have a mental bucket list but have yet to put those things on paper.

I think I started my first bucket list when I was 5 or 6. Any girl at that age, the top of their bucket list is Disney World or Disney Land (depending on what coast you live on). Which I accomplished when I was 22. Now, I want to take my girls to Disney to experience the wonders they offer as kids. I have always had travel locations that I want to tour on my bucket list(s). I want to tour Italy which could take a lifetime with all of the history, architecture and art that I want to enjoy. Ireland, Germany, France, England and the rest of Europe are on my list. Plus, Hawaii, the different countries in the Caribbean, Bali and other exotic locations. In more recent years, I have added a cross-country road trip to the list so that I can show the girls different landmarks in the country we live in.

Beyond travel, I have things that I want on my bucket list. Like purchasing a house is on my list. I would love to stop renting and paying someone else for the house we live in and call home. Finishing my degree is an important one on my list. Hopefully, this will happen sooner than later. I want to eventually have my tattoo on my leg finished.

Some things I have marked off my bucket list: becoming a Philadelphia Horticultural Society member, seeing Pitbull and U2 in concert, going to Las Vegas, having a girls trip with my friends, learn how to crochet (turned into a business!), learn how to screen print on clothes (so much fun!)

A bucket list gives you something to look forward to in life… goals for your future. Your bucket list just needs to start with one thing that you want to accomplish in your life.

Here are some ideas:

Camping

Traveling to different areas

Concerts to See

Events you want to attend

Eat at a favorite restaurant

Attend an art class

Learn a new Hobby

Remodel a Room in your House

Start a new Self Care routine

Learn how to Bake/Cook

and the list is endless!

This Bucket List list can help you kick start your bucket list with different areas to think about adding to your list. This is the PDF printable version: My Bucket List

When I first heard the term “Life Mantra”, honestly I thought it sounded kinda weird and crazy. I mean why did I need a life mantra to remind myself that I am a wonderful person or that my life is amazing?

It took me many years to realize that I needed the life mantra because I would mentally beat myself up. Everytime something went wrong in my life, a relationship or friendship would end, I fell behind on bills…. anything that was wrong, I would tell myself hateful things. I would tell myself how stupid I am, how ugly I am, that my life sucked or that I was just not loveable.

When I wasn’t in the throes of my anxiety or depression, I could see how my life wasn’t as horrible as my mind was making it. In the midst of those throws, it was like a tape recorder on repeat where all the bad things were just ongoing in my mind. How could I feel like a wonderful person when the one person that should love…. me …. couldn’t say one nice thing to myself??

That is when I started working on my self-care and reading everything I could on helping get myself out of this repeat mode of bad thoughts. I can’t even tell how many self-help books I have read over the past 10 years but the one recurring theme was to change your bad thoughts into good thoughts. In addition to changing your thoughts, you should implement positive affirmations into your daily self care routine.

I like to take the positive affirmations one step further and created a life mantra. My life mantra is something that I like to repeat to myself when I start those bad thoughts. When life gets stressful and my instinct is to beat myself up, I repeat “I am loving and loveable” to myself over and over and over until I snap out. Some days, life gets overwhelming and I will not only repeat my mantra to myself but I will write my mantra down so that I see what I want to feel.

I know that some people use “I am Enough” or “My Life is Wonderful” as their life mantra. Your Life Mantra should feel unique to you. Think about how you wan to feel about yourself or your life…

Do you want to feel more love? Do you want to feel like you are enough? Do you want to feel your life is going in a certain direction? Do you want to feel successful in your life?

Once you come up with your life mantra, it will take some time and practice but start by saying your life mantra to yourself when you wake up and before you go to bed. Doing this in the mirror is more effective, especially in the beginning, to get your mind used to repeating this to yourself. When you begin to think those bad thoughts, turn your thoughts to your life mantra to turn yourself around to the positive side.

Yes, this takes work, time and patience but it is so worth it because self-care is important to everyone at every age. Start slow and begin to build your life mantra into your everyday thinking. When you see yourself, spiraling down, say your mantra and bring yourself up again. I believe in you and now it is time to believe in yourself!

I am a firm believer in the law of attraction and your thoughts attract what you do or don’t want into your life. That being said, your thought process attracts your income and abundance in your life. When you think about what you want to achieve in a positive way then positive things will happen.

Think about it… when you feel like you are drowning in debt and can’t keep up with your bills, all of your thoughts are on your debt and how you can’t pay your bills. If you think about how you make more than enough money to pay your bills or how you are able to pay your debt off with ease, you are putting a positive spin on a negative thing in your life.

Say you want to be a stay at home mom with your kids but you don’t think your family could afford. Think of a positive affirmation to say and write to yourself everyday about the situation. When your mind is thinking about this situation from a positive aspect, you open your mind and life up to other opportunities. Maybe a work at home position opens up for you. Maybe you find a way to budget and cut expenses to stay at home with the kids. The possibilities are endless when you think positively about it.

One way that I attract the things I want in my life is through affirmations. Every morning, I find or create an affirmation that aids in accomplishing my current goal(s). I will say this affirmation to myself throughout the day. When I have a negative thought come through, I need to consciously stop myself and think about my affirmation to turn myself around. Now, that part has been an ongoing work in progress because it is easy to let the negative thoughts swirl in your head before you realize you need to turn that thought process around.

Being a Work At Home Mom, I can feel the frustrations and financial burden of my household when I don’t bring in more income then we need to cover some of our bills. Suffering from depression and anxiety, I can let myself get pulled down by these feelings very easily. Affirmations have been a great way to release the negative and find the positive especially in this situation.

My current goal: pay off my medical bills from my pregnancy and birth. Since I had a high risk pregnancy and lost my insurance for a portion of that pregnancy, finally got insurance with a huge deductible ($7500) and gave birth on January 1st (new deductible kicked in), my medical bills are about $20k with some bills still trickling in 4 months later. This has been a huge hit on my credit report because I was on bed rest and couldn’t just pay the bills out of pocket and we want to buy a house next year. So it is time to clean up my credit and pay off these bills.

Here are my top 5 Affirmations that I use to help my mindset attract more money:

Money Flows To Me From Multiple Sources

I Feel Excited To Pay My Bills Off

I Now Attract An Abundance Of Money Into My Life

Money Comes To Me Easily and Effortlessly

I Am A Money Magnet

Since starting this journey, I have made a game plan of how I am paying off those bills (this is big for me because just looking at the bills made me want to run the other way), how I can cut down some of our excess spending to pay towards the debt and have seen more sales come in from business orders and yard sale sites. When I was dwelling on the negativity of the debt, I wasn’t getting anything accomplished but when I turned my thoughts into how I am paying off my debt, the good has flowed into my life.

Hobbies are a great way to lose oneself in something that they enjoy while relaxing their stresses and mind.

Starting in high school, people and jobs would ask me if I had any hobbies but I had no idea if I had any hobbies or really what a hobby was. My idea of a hobby was collecting things like baseball cards (which as a kid I had binders full of baseball cards) or making model cars. As a kid, hobbies seemed like something boys did not girls.

Little did I know, I had a hobby since I could read…. reading books. As soon as I could walk to the library, I spent so many hours reading books at the library and then taking books home and reading until the wee hours of the morning. My mom loves to tell the story that I loved to read so much that while walking down the street, I was reading and walked into a pole….

Yes I found my hobby but I didn’t know it. In my 20s, my hobby evolved to crocheting which has turned into my handmade business. In the past few years, my hobby is gardening because I love to see what I can grow and my family can eat. I still love to read but I don’t have the time to always read so I listen to a lot of audio books. My stress release that I found in crocheting was lost for a while because the business aspect replaced the fun aspect. Now that I have Evie to crochet fun things for, crocheting has become fun again.

Without my hobbies, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through some of the most stressful situations in my life. My hobbies are what brought me happiness and released the stress that my mind and body were feeling at the time.

Reasons to have a hobby:

Helps to relieve the stress your mind and body feels on a daily basis

Helps to encourage you to challenge your mind with different tasks

Helps you take a break from your daily tasks

Helps you to explore new hobbies and evolve as a person

Helps with anxiety and depression

Helps to relieve the stress your mind and body feels on a daily basis:

The body and mind need time to destress everyday. Without this destressing time, the body fills with negative feelings and thoughts which is not healthy. A hobby naturally boosts your positivity about yourself and life which releases the stress brought on by the negative.

Helps to encourage you to challenge your mind with different tasks:

A hobby challenges a person to find new ways to accomplish their hobby. For example, a knitter will finish one project and will search for a new, more difficult pattern to accomplish next. The brain wants to be challenged and learn new things which a hobby aids in accomplishing.

Helps you take a break from your daily tasks:

Everyone needs a break from their daily routine or life becomes mundane and dull. When life becomes dull, a person becomes bored and can become depressed. Even a 5 minute break enjoying your hobby can aid in changing things up and keep your day fresh.

Helps you to explore new hobbies and evolve as a person:

Over the years, your hobbies can stay the same or they can evolve into a new hobby. Someone that loves to paint, may learn a new painting technique or a new type of art. Learning new hobbies or techniques helps a person evolve mentally and physically (depending on the type of hobby).

Helps with anxiety and depression:

As someone who has suffered from both anxiety and depression since I was a teen, having a hobby that I enjoyed has helped relieve both of these. Keeping yourself busy with a hobby helps to calm your nerves and anxiety by having your mind distracted with the current task you are enjoying. When you are involved mentally and physically, there leaves little room for your depression to creep in at that moment. Over time, your mind will learn to release the anxiety and depression while you are involved with your hobby.

There are so many different hobbies that people can have that have so many healthy and happiness benefits. You can practice yoga or meditation. You can work out at a gym or walk around your neighborhood. You can read books or draw/paint pictures. You can build model cars or rebuild classic cars. You can crochet, knit or sew special things for people in your life. The possibilities are endless and here is a list of 40 hobbies you can try today! Here is a PDF printable of the list: 50 Hobbies To Try

Have you ever gotten to a point in your life that you have kept so much bottled up inside that you feel like a volcano ready to explode? Maybe the person you need to talk to is not around to express your feelings? Do you feel like you have no one to talk to about what is going on in your life? There are more than one reason a person holds in their feelings instead of expressing them but writing them out is a way of getting those feelings out.

Lately, I have had a lot going on in my personal life that only a few people know about. This situation has been playing over and over in my mind until I get to the point of wanting to scream my head off. Thankfully, I have had a few close friends and family to listen to me talk about this situation… over and over. I have tried to talk to the person that is involved with the situation but that is like talking to a brick wall.

My solution to getting my feelings out without annoying the hell out of my friends and family or getting frustrated for talking to a wall… write it out! I have been journal writing since high school because a counselor suggested it as a way to express my feelings without having to talk about them. I won’t lie, I can go long periods without writing in my journal because things are either going so well that I don’t feel the need to write OR things are so bad that I am to numb to write.

When I write my out my feelings, I feel a sense of relief afterwards. Sometimes this relief is short-lived… a few hours or it can last a few days or weeks. No matter how long this relief lasts for the fact that I am able to express my feelings is the healthy aspect of living a positive life. Yes, we all have negativity in our lives whether we want it our not but it is how we handle this negativity that makes the difference in living a positive life. Journal writing helps turn those negative feelings we are dealing with into a positive way of expression.

Journal writing can aid in keeping you connected with your mind and body aka mindfulness. It can keep your mind focused on goals that need or want to be accomplished. Taking the time to write in a journal teaches self-discipline to do a task when you feel a trigger coming that needs to be expressed. Journal writing has healing benefits for people with depression, anxiety and sleep disorders because it helps to calm the mind. This is just some of the benefits of journal writing!

I used to and still do love writing with a pen and paper. Just the feeling of releasing my feelings while the ink glides across the paper. Seeing those words come to life is just a magical feeling. Unfortunately, my hands do not want to cooperate with writing with a pen and paper. After a few minutes of writing, my hands end up in a lot of pain so I have started making my journal writing digital. I use google drive to make my documents because it is free and I can use it among all my devices. Like last night, I needed to write my feelings out so I was able to grab my phone, open the app and type away until I felt better.

So, whether you need a pen and paper or a computer/tablet/phone to write your feelings, it doesn’t matter as long as you write your feelings out. Good feelings, bad feelings… all feelings matter and feel great when you write them down. I encourage you to start writing today!

In my life right now, I am focused on my self-care and working towards a positive life which means eliminating the negativity in my life. Part of that negativity are my Wednesday rant posts. As nice as it is to vent my feeling but when I started to let the venting and negativity take over my life, it was time to work taking the bad out and bring the good in. So, instead of focusing on venting on Wednesdays I am going to focus on ways to bring good things into my life and your life with Worth It Wednesday!

What does Worth It Wednesday mean?

Worth It Wednesday is all about living the life you are worth living. Finding positivity in every aspect of your life. Being grateful for what you have and what you will receive in the future. Holding yourself accountable for what how your thinking, feeling and living your life. Making the necessary changes to make your life the one you want.

My goal for my new Wednesday series is to post ways that help you live your best life. This will include different activities that could help in your journey. As well, I will feature products that will aid in your positive life journey. I am a quote lover, so there will be posts that feature quotes that will enhance your life. I am sure as my journey continues, I will have different themes and posts that I haven’t thought of yet.

I am excited to share my journey with all of you and I hope that these future posts will encourage you to live the life you are worth living because it is worth it to live your best life.

With everything that has occurred this year, I have been struggling with my gratitude and thankfulness, hence the many missing Thankful Thursday posts. It has become difficult to be grateful when I am so angry at so many people and at the Universe.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for my kids and supportive family and friends through these difficult times. The problem is that I draw a blank when I think about what I am grateful for in my life. I will find something I am grateful for and then think about what I don’t have or how I got screwed out of something related to this grateful thing, and I am back to being angry again.

This mindset of anger has effected every aspect of my life where I am not striving to be the best I can be. My business has been slow going because I feel like I just run out of time to do anything. Instead of doing what I need to do, my mind wanders and before I know it I have been thinking and engrossing myself for over an hour. Poof that time I had while the baby is sleeping is now gone and I can’t get it back. The rift in my already damaged marriage is just increasing in size because if I can’t control my anger towards things then I can’t be in a good place to work on bridging the gap. Even my poor supportive friends are being neglected because I know that when I speak, all I do is spew negativity so I have just stopped talking at all. The only ones that I have tried to protect from my ungratefulness is my children because no matter what they are my main priority in life and I don’t want them to feel my anger.

This all means that I need to go back to the beginning and work on myself. I need to make working on my self care and self love a priority because dwelling on my anger is only bringing myself and everyone around me down.

My top 5 things to help me work on my self care:

Write and recite daily affirmations

Write 5 things I am grateful for every night, even when I am not feeling grateful

Listen to/Read the Secret and my other go to self care books

Write out my feelings in my journal, even if it is multiple times a day

Give myself time to love myself

In the past, I have gone through these periods which were triggered by a stress factor and in the past few months since Evelynne was born there has been multiple stressors. I know I can’t beat myself up for needing to start over in my self care journey (trust me I have been beating myself up for months now) because I am only human. As humans, we will go forward and have our setbacks but that is what makes us grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Do you have any tips to get out of your funk and back to self care?

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Hi my name is Meagan, I am the owner, creator and write of Kaella Boutique and Blog. I am a mom to 4 beautiful kids ranging from an infant to 17 years old and our 1 year old puppy Max. I am the wife to a hardworking man and amazing dad. Plus, (as Danyella makes me say) the grandma to Benny the rabbit. My life is all about creating and bringing beauty into the world.